Hey guys, I know it's not really a popular plugin format yet, but I'd love to see LV2 plugin support in Reaper.

On the windows side, it wouldn't be a huge issue, because we already have tons of VST plugins. It'd be cool to be able to use Harrison's plugins and other LV2 plugins though.

However, on the up-and-coming Linux NATIVE version, LV2 support would be a huge deal!
Most worthwhile plugins for linux are in LV2 format, not LinuxVST, so it would open up a huge range of plugin support. I know Linux NATIVE is in it's super infant stages, but it'd be awesome to get this ball rolling sooner rather than later.

+1
I agree, its a logical step forward and would provide a good boost to developers doing LV2 for all platforms. Then that paves the way for Reaper linux and the beginning of a full open standard! No reliance on Steinberg, Apple, Microsoft.

+1
I agree, its a logical step forward and would provide a good boost to developers doing LV2 for all platforms. Then that paves the way for Reaper linux and the beginning of a full open standard! No reliance on Steinberg, Apple, Microsoft.

I'd be really interested in that too! VST on Linux is still very unstable, and sometimes even unusable. LV2 support will add lots of plugins to the Native Linux port, and also enables Windows and Mac users to use lots of free, high quality, open source plugins.

The current native Linux builds are working very well for most of my needs. Being able to use the excellent Calf, Guitarix and x42 LV2 plugins without needing Carla or some other bridge would be a huge bonus. +1 from me for LV2 support.

I'd be really interested in that too! VST on Linux is still very unstable, and sometimes even unusable. LV2 support will add lots of plugins to the Native Linux port, and also enables Windows and Mac users to use lots of free, high quality, open source plugins.

Using these and others, you can create sort of a "Poor Man's Drumagog". This comes in handy for drum replacement on unruly tracks that would require a lot of EQ, compression, etc., not to mention all of the tweaking involved, in order to come even close to the sound of good drum samples:

1) Add the "JS: Audio To MIDI Drum Trigger" plugin (or your favorite gate plugin that has MIDI output capability). For example, if the kick drum track is lousy, set the gate to trigger on note 36 (kick drum).

2) Follow that with a good MIDI drum kit plugin (the ones above are excellent), and adjust things to taste.

This is of course only one example. The LV2 format seems to be becoming more and more popular these days and there are tons of other plugins out there, just do a bit of searching on Google.

I was envisioning to run carla as a vst plugin and load the lv2 plugins inside of it.

I must be totally misunderstanding the way this thing works. There are no DLL files in the Windows 64-bit ZIP, the only executable being "Carla.exe", which fires up the entire GUI. How could it be run as a plugin?

I must be totally misunderstanding the way this thing works. There are no DLL files in the Windows 64-bit ZIP, the only executable being "Carla.exe", which fires up the entire GUI. How could it be run as a plugin?

I just asked the dev of carla, and unfortunately he hasn't been able to make carla work as a plugin on windows.

Thanks for checking into this personally, Jack... Much appreciated!

Weird though, if it doesn't work with Windows, I wonder why there 32 and 64-bit Windows versions available for download on his web site? On the good side, I have been able to successfully run several LV2 plugins within it, the routing GUI is very cool, but there's no function to get it to "talk" to REAPER. Hopefully, he's still pursuing getting it to run as a plugin on Windows DAWs.

Oh well, guess we'll need to remain optimistic that the REAPER developers add LV2 support to the Windows version soon. There are so many great plugins out there in this format. It's the only thing I miss about Mixbus, which otherwise from my experience I consider a very inflexible and unstable DAW. Hence, the switch to REAPER... Much happier camper now, even without LV2!

Weird though, if it doesn't work with Windows, I wonder why there 32 and 64-bit Windows versions available for download on his web site? On the good side, I have been able to successfully run several LV2 plugins within it, the routing GUI is very cool, but there's no function to get it to "talk" to REAPER. Hopefully, he's still pursuing getting it to run as a plugin on Windows DAWs.

You could try to get jack and qjackctl working on windows, if you can get that up and running you ought to be able to route audio from reaper to carla and back again. Though again something I've never done myself...

And it's probably a pain not to have the fx inside of reaper to be recalled when you load a project.

You could try to get jack and qjackctl working on windows, if you can get that up and running you ought to be able to route audio from reaper to carla and back again. Though again something I've never done myself...

And it's probably a pain not to have the fx inside of reaper to be recalled when you load a project.

Yep, I think that would be too much of a hassle to configure and maintain, or even if it's possible. I'm not feeling that adventurous. ;^)

For my purposes, I guess I just need to keep hunting for a good VST drum kit plugin, comparable to the Black Pearl or Red Zeppelin LV2 plugins I linked earlier... Suggestions welcome!

I've set up my effects rack on the kick drum channel with the "JS: Audio To MIDI Drum Trigger" plugin feeding DrumGizmo, using the proper kick drum notes as mapped in each kit's MIDI map XML file. The thing I can't figure out with this plugin is that, although I am getting sound, it's extremely weak. I think it must have something to do with the following, as noted in the README_VST.txt file which is part of the DrumGizmo ZIP:

"NOTE: DrumGizmo uses several audio output channels, which should be mapped manually in your software, just like you would do with any other plugin. We can't describe this step since it varies depending on your software. But keep in mind that if you do not map these channels, you will most likely only hear the output of one of the ambience microphones and it will sound really bad. So please take your time to get these mappings set up!"

Sure sounds like my problem, eh? Anyone have any experience with checking and setting this up properly in REAPER?

Yeah that does sound like a fitting description. When I load drumgimo though I get a message asking about routing and it automatically creates output tracks. I haven't tried to play any sounds yet though, I'll have to download a kit and give it a try. There must be someone else here with experience of it though.

The 16 output channels will handle the sound from DrumGizmo. Which track is for which kit piece is explained in the info for the kit (on the DrumGizmo site for the kits, and also in a file included in each download).

If you're looking to "swap snare drums" within a DrumGizmo kit, I don't think you'll want to bother.

Each kit piece (note) is essentially a bunch of samples for "the same kit piece" at different velocities, managed by an XML file for that kit piece. Within the XML file is info about the velocity ranges for each of the samples and their routing. The samples can be multi-channel, and in the case of the kits on the DrumGizmo site, they are 13-channel WAV files, due to the kit author choosing to record bleed from every mic for every kit piece (snare sample = top, bottom, OHx2, roomx2, and all the other kit piece mics as bleed). Each drumkit is represented by an XML file which points to all the kit piece XML files, and any other relevant information (choke group, etc.) Then there's a MIDI map XML file which contains information for the kit, how each kit piece goes to each MIDI note.

If the routing of the audio channels of a kit piece is different from one kit to another, editing the XML files to allow swapping of a snare for instance (from one kit to another) means providing the channel routing of the samples relative to the kit you're "fitting it into". It's possible but it means editing the kit piece XML file and the drumkit XML file. Editing the files is relatively easy but it's not an automatic thing like clicking a button in a plugin; it would take time to figure out what you want to do, edit the XML files and then you'd end up with your "alternate" kit with a swapped kit piece.

That's partly what's taken me so long with the Tchackpoum DrumGizmo kits. Each "kit piece" in this case = one round robin (there are for instance 4 alternate hits for the center, rim, sidestick, dampened articulations of a snare, each with multiple samples for varying velocity). So there's an extra layer of complexity making all the XML files for these kits. Plus there are several snares, toms, kicks, etc., so making variants of the kits is something that had to be done so people wouldn't immediatley say "yeah I like kit A but I want the snare from kit B instead".

Anyway DrumGizmo itself doesn't do round robin, but as long as each round-robin variant is on a separate note, a round robin JS plugin handles that nicely at negligible CPU cost. I've been testing each kit piece "as its own kit" as I go along building these, making sure I didn't miss anything. It sounds really good.

Features coming to DrumGizmo in the future:

-bleed level control, for people who record their samples with all the extra bleed channels (such as the kits on the DrumGizmo site)

Wow, thank you JamesPeters for that detailed explanation on DrumGizmo! I've had to read it several times to fully digest everything, but it's really helped me to understand how that plugin works.

FYI, I've been playing around some more with it, first loading it as a normal plugin and changing the "Run as" setting. Here's the results of that:

1) Run as > Default - Results in a blank UI.
2) Run as > Separate process - This is the only mode I can get any sound out of it at all.
3) Run as > Dedicated process - UI looks normal, but buttons do not work.
4) Run as > Native only - Same result as #1, must be the default.

I've also tried what you suggested, loading it as a virtual instrument. After doing that, I really think this thing is way overkill for what I'm trying to do, which is simple replacement on kick drum tracks. Having to add 16 tracks for that is way too cumbersome for what I'm trying to accomplish.

Probably the best thing for me to do now is to find additional instrument plugins for different sounds, similar to the "MT Power Drum Kit", which is a very nice sounding kit for openers. Here's a partial screenshot to give you an idea of my configuration, using a gate to trigger the kick drum.

Yeah DrumGizmo can do a lot. But also you can make a "kit" consisting of as little as a single sample, on a single key, using only one output (not even requiring setting up the multi-outs). It would still require working with the XML files to do so (although apparently in Linux there's a DrumGizmo kit editor).

If you wanted "just a multi-velocity bank of kick samples" for a single note on a single channel, that's also easy. That's how I've been testing every "kit piece" that I've made XML files for, as I go along.

So if you like a particular DrumGizmo kit's kick sound, you can solo one of its channels (in/out/sub) and then decide to edit the XML files to remove everything except that, and assign its output to one of the first 2 available. (If this is something you'd want to do, I can help. Let me know. But first you'd have to have a DrumGizmo kit of which you like the sound of the kick. I'd just edit the XML files for you.)

Either way you're still going to be searching around for sounds.

Yeah the blank GUI thing happens if you open the plugin "floating" outside the effect chain window. Close it, open the effects chain by hitting the FX button on the track. DrumGizmo's GUI will work. (This is apparently fixed in the upcoming version.)

I'm certainly no XML expert, so I'm sure this is just a rookie screw-up on my part...

I did experiment with the XML files trying to get this to work very simply, with only one kick drum sample, figuring I could add the rest later once I got things figured out. But, all I've managed to do is totally crash REAPER to the desktop when I attempt to load the single-sample kit I created into DrumGizmo.

Here's my directory configuration:

The path of the single sample I'm trying to use (along with many others I'd like to add later) is in:

After a lot of experimenting in trying to get this to work, I'm a bit embarassed to say that the only thing I've accomplished is to thoroughly confuse myself as to how all of this needs to be configured.

I'd sincerely appreciate it if you could tell a DrumGizmo/XML newbie where I'm going wrong here, and perhaps provide example drum kit and midi map files that would accomplish what I'm after?

The first strange thing I ran into was, I couldn't get this to work at all until I added 'version="2.0"' to the instrument XML file. I noticed this parameter in the DrumGizmo XML syntax documentation, and gave it a try. Low and behold, after that I was finally hearing the replacement sample.

But, I'm only hearing it from the left channel, and only when I turn the "Wet" control on DrumGizmo up. On the right channel, I hear the original kick track. Obviously, something is still screwed up with my XML or routing, or maybe it's because the sample is in stereo?